#RichLifeLawyer Show 012: Five Success Principles
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Success is possible for all of us. As an estate planning attorney I’ve seen people go from nothing to everything by following a few simple ideas. These are those ideas.
To get that and more, just listen to the show!
Hey everybody, Christopher Small here, this is episode twelve of The Rich Life Lawyer Show, I’m excited to be here with you today. I’m gonna talk about success. I love talking about success. So one of the things that I read a lot about, putting a practice a lot, think about a lot, because I truly believe in made this little woo woo for you but I believe that, that we all have our best selves locked inside of us and that it takes a lot of work to get that out. I don’t think that we are always at our best. I think that we let other people’s rules and other people’s beliefs about the way that we should live, sort of run our decision making process from time to time and I don’t like that.
So, these are not all the success principles that I sort of live by, but they are five of the big ones and I wanted to share them with you because I guess that I am here to yes, I’m here to put your will together, do that kinds of stuff. That’s like what I do but I wanna give you a rich life too. I want your life to be as good as the life that you give your family when you’re not here anymore. And when you all that, I can do all that for you. I can help you at least with that. So, let’s just dive in.
Success strategy number one is habits. We can have bad habits or we can have good habits and the habits that we have, we are in complete control of. Now, to change from a bad habit to a good habit can take a quite a bit of work, but it is possible to do, it just takes small steps everyday. Let me give you an example. So I have a morning routine and I do this almost everyday. Okay, I don’t do it everyday, I have a three year old. I have a one and a half year old at home.
Sometimes, no matter how early, this is sort of off topic little bit but I feel like my kids have like their own internal alarm clock and it’s set to when I wake up. So, I wake up, I’m like trying to do my thing and sometimes they just wake up with me and they’re not leaving around. But I digress. Habits, so our morning routine that I do everyday. I wake up and I do about ten minutes of exercise which include yoga, push ups, just some things to, to kind of try to keep me fit and to try to just get the blood flowing. Do five minutes of meditation for people this can be silence, prayer, things like that. I just listen to a meditation app on my phone.
I do affirmations which are things that sort of like a goal statements and just things that put me in a right firm of mind to really attack the day in a good way. Vision board, you want that new house, you want that new boat, you want to pay off that debt. Make find pictures that represent those things and look at them and imagine what life is gonna be like when you’re there.
It’s funny how the universe works to sort of help you get there. I do gratefulness, and I am journaling, or I talk about one thing I’m grateful for with my family everyday and then I talk about what happened the day before. It’s a quick journal, like how was the day. Then I, what I do after that. Trying to learn French. So I spent about fifteen minutes on French. I have this app again that I do knock it out. And that’s it. Eat breakfast, drink some water, and I’m heading out for the day.
Because these kind of habits that will lead you to success. Same with automating your finances and doing these things. These little habits can make a huge differences throughout your day.
Number two, the second success habit is putting in a place or I guess understanding the idea of strategy. Strategy is the, the way that you’re going to get to your ultimate sort of goal. So for example, I’ll give you a perfect example, I’ll use the show for an example. What I am trying to do, what I wanna do. Is create the best estate planning law firm in the world. I think we are the best but I wanna create the best and one of the ways that that’s created is by having a lot of great clients. So, the strategy there is to market our firm. We have to let people know about us. And by knowing that that’s the strategy. By that’s one of the ways that we could do this. Another strategy is to provide excellent service obviously.
Then you can drill down into tactics. What you need to do to get there. What are the specific, what make the deals. Have processes or procedures in place so that everything happens the same, every time and everyone knows what their role is. I mean these kinds of things. So, it’s important for you to have strategies too. So to think about how you’re gonna get to where you wanna go. You’re gonna have to save. Are you gonna save? Are you gonna earn more? What kind of strategies are you gonna have to reach your dreams.
And then you can execute on those with tactics and things like that. Number two. Number three, enjoy the journey. It is, you may or may not believe this but it is within your complete control whether or not you have a good time in life or bad time in life. All that is dependent on is your perspective. Now, here’s a perfect example. You’re in traffic. You have two options, you’re stuck in traffic. Let’s just say you’re sitting in a highway. You have two options. You can be angry and grumpy about it. That’s option number one and wonder why nobody’s moving and curse everybody.
Or you can take as an opportunity to enjoy some alone time. you can take it as an opportunity to turn the radio up and have a sing along. With your kids. You can take as an opportunity to get a little bit more time out of that audio that you’ve been listening to. You know, those are two different perspectives of the exact same situation that I have a completely different effect on the outcome of the situation. And that is what I’m talking about when I mean enjoy the journey.
Just understand that your road is not always gonna be flat and downhill. Sometimes you’re gonna have to go uphill. Sometimes there gonna be some huge potholes in the way. But you can approach them with a sense of excitement and courage or you can be a grumpy. Don’t be a grumpy.
Number four, do not keep score. Don’t keep score. When it comes to giving gifts, for giving attention, giving love, receiving love, receiving attention, receiving gifts, don’t keep score. It’s not a good way to through life. Again, it goes back to you’re gonna have a hard time enjoying everything if you’re always wondering if you paid exactly fifty percent of that dinner bill. Then when it doesn’t really matter. So don’t keep score. You want a gift. Give as much as you can.
Look I’m not telling you that just go lay down for everybody and be like a patsy or whatever but go you know, be nice, give all of yourself, and don’t do it expecting something in return. That’s never gonna be good. And then, success habit number five is to continue to learn throughout life, I think I’ve read something somewhere like 95% of people don’t ever read a book. Or haven’t read a book in a year or five years or something like that once they get out of high school. That is just so sad. Cause there are so much growth that you can accomplish after school.
Think about how much you’ve changed in the last year. In the last five years. That growth that changed could’ve been enhanced. Could’ve been molded and shaped if you will just continue to learn, continue to read, listen to audio books like I just said. You can do all these things. There are bunch of opportunities to do that and a whole world that can open up to you. If you take the time to do that. So, why don’t we do this. That is the perfect lead in to our question of the show. What I wanna know is, what is the last book that you read. I wanna know the last book that you read and talk to me the last book that I read was this is tough for me because I’m always reading so there are two that I’m reading right now. Although the last book that I read was Warren Buffet’s biography, it’s called Snowball. It’s big.
It was great but I wanna know what you read. Again, if you have questions, I have answers Twitter @richlifelawyer, Facebook facebook.com/richlifelawyer use the hashtag #richlifelawyershow. I will answer your questions. Looking forward to it, see ya!
Cheers,
Christopher Small
P.S. Do you have kids? Have you completed guardianship paperwork? Have you done it correctly? Click here to find out what happens if you don’t do anything: Are you okay with a judge choosing the guardians of your children?
P.P.S. Do you own a business? Do you have a plan so the business, and your family, can survive if something happens to you? If not, click here to learn how simple it is to protect your business and your family from tragedy: 5 Ways to Protect Your Business from Catastrophic Failure.
P.P.P.S. Do you have no kids and think you don’t need an estate plan? Single and think a will is only for married couples. You couldn’t be more wrong. Click here to learn more: 5 reasons estate planning is a must have even if you don’t have kids.
Christopher Small is a Kirkland estate planning attorney who helps people get rich and live forever. He is also the owner of CMS Law Firm LLC.
Originally published at cmslawfirm.com on April 13, 2016.
